Newsletter

Vandals being locked out on Tybee

Visitors to the Tybee Island Pier and Pavillion walk through the newly installed gates Saturday afternoon.

With vandalism of bathrooms and other public places on the rise, Tybee officials are taking steps to alleviate the problem.

Destruction in the bathrooms has become so bad "so we are being forced to close them," said Shirley Sessions, Tybee's mayor pro tem.

The city has been locking the doors of the public bathrooms in Tybee's parks, at 9 p.m., for about a month. They used to be open 24 hours.

"We have always had people writing on the bathroom walls, but it was starting to get excessive, said Diane Schleicher, Tybee Island city manager. "People were putting potted plants in the toilets and ripping the electric hand driers off the wall. It was costing the city an average of about $300 per week."

It is cheaper, the city determined, to close the bathrooms at night and reopen them at 8 a.m., than to clean up the vandalism almost daily.

Public bathrooms aren't the only places that are being closed off at night.

The Chatham County Parks and Recreation Department erected a gate last week at the entrance of the Tybee Island Pier & Pavilion, to keep people out at night, after it is closed.

It is Chatham County, not the city of Tybee, that operates the pier.

Most of the complaints received have to do with the lights and music on the end of the pier at night.

"The problem really isn't vandal- ism on the pier, it's all the light," said Dean Morrison, a maintenance worker for the county. "People bring their lights and lanterns to the end of the pier, it's a wonder someone hasn't burned it down."

The pier, which is supposed to close nightly at 11 p.m., is usually open all night long.

The gates have only been closed once, Morrison said.

The scoop

What: The Tybee Island Pier and Pavilion.

Where: Located just off U.S. 80 at the end of Tybrisa Street.

When: The pier, usually open 24 hours, now has a gated entrance, which officials say will close at 11 p.m. to minimize recent acts of vandalism.